


Reason to Be

by stardropdream



Category: Chobits
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zima wakes up before Dita.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reason to Be

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ December 24, 2009.

  
  
The first thing he’s aware of is waking up. He blinks open his eyes, feels himself boot up and the whirl of his insides clicking to life and charging. The world is fuzzy and out of focus—there is a man leaning over him, hair wild and black, eyes obscured by large glasses glinting in the fluorescent light behind his head.  
  
He’s shining a flashlight into his face, each eye. He follows the beam, feels his pupils shrink at the insistent light. Something clicks in his ear and suddenly he’s able to pick up audio.  
  
“Visionary systems are operational,” someone off to his side says. He hears snapping, the soft slap of finger against skin. Once in his right ear and another in his left. His eyes glance over, trying to locate the source of the sound, to see the hands of his creators.  
  
“Auditory systems are operational,” the man above him says, and then he smiles down at him. “Good morning. How are you?”  
  
He blinks until the vision clears completely and he can see the world in high definition. The sounds are crisp and clear. He nods.  
  
“Good morning. I am fully operational.”  
  
The man’s smile turns almost goofy and he gives him the thumbs up. “Excellent.”  
  
He sits up, and his body moves like fluid, as if he’s done this a million times before.  
  
“How do you feel?”  
  
He puzzles over his for a moment before he nods again. “Fully operational.”  
  
“That isn’t what I asked,” the man scolds, but doesn’t sound upset or disappointed, which means he must not have done anything wrong. “How do you _feel_?”  
  
He puzzles again over this question. He does not nod this time. “I do not understand.”  
  
“You’ll learn,” the man says, setting a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Until then, I suppose it’s time to name you.”  
  
He nods. “Please choose a name suitable.”  
  
“Zima,” the man says with no hesitation, as if he’d known the name since long before Zima ever awoke.  
  
The inside of his head hummed as he added away the information. “My name is Zima. It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
“Do you know why you’re here, Zima?”  
  
“I am the National Database. I am to house information of the state and keep it safe.”  
  
“That’s correct,” the man says with a nod, pleased. He smoothed his hand over Zima’s shoulders, poking and prodding and testing to make sure he was fully operational, despite Zima’s assessment as such. “Relax.”  
  
Zima did as he was told, relaxing.  
  
His creator smiled. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, placing it on bridge of Zima’s nose.  
  
“You’ll learn.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“This is the fifth time this month you’ve been hacked into, Zima.”  
  
“I know,” Zima says and gives an apologetic smile. He’s growing more and more into his personality now, learning and adapting to the environment around him. “They breached my security systems.”  
  
“I guess it’s true that your security systems are a bit below par. I spent too much energy making sure you’d have enough space on your memory for everything you need to hold on to, and to give you enough processing power in order to maintain your personality adaptations.”  
  
He is poked and prodded at. He closes his eyes.  
  
“I’ll get to work on protecting you. In the meantime, try to stay out of hot spots where your database can be more easily detected.”  
  
“Yes,” he agrees.  
  
There’s a silence as his creator pokes at him, his ears click as he fiddles with the small stubs of his ears, hidden beneath his hair.  
  
He pauses, and looks as if he’s going to speak. Zima eyes him, silently inviting his questions.  
  
“How do you feel?” he asked after a moment.  
  
Zima puzzles over his question, not because he does not understand but because he cannot figure out the way to describe how he _feels._  
  
“Tired,” he decides.  
  
His creator nods. “It’s understandable. Running your operating system for so long and maintaining the databases will wear you out, especially if you’re never turned off.”  
  
“Yes,” he agrees.  
  
“But that isn’t what I asked,” his creator says, gentle and sympathetic.  
  
Zima stares at him a moment, his insides whirling as they worked overtime to remedy what the hackers had destroyed.  
  
“Are you lonely?”  
  
“Lonely?”  
  
His creator presses a palm to Zima’s chest, where a heart would be if he had one. Zima looks at the hand, feeling a strange distance between himself and his human “father”. His eyes hood in thought, frowning as he puzzles over the words once again.  
  
“Yes, lonely,” his creator urges. “Feeling an ache for someone or something. Being without companionship. Solitude.”  
  
Zima gives him a wry smile. “I know the definition of lonely.”  
  
“I know you do,” his creator says and drops his hand from Zima’s chest.  
  
Zima’s hand replaces where his creator’s had been a moment before, pressing against where a heart did not exist. He closes his eyes, thinking this over.  
  
He’s quiet a moment, and then: “I think I am.”  
  
“I thought so,” his creator says. “I could see it in your face.”  
  
“You could?” Zima asks and wonders what a lonely face looks like.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“But I’ll work hard so you won’t make that face again,” his creator says, smiling at Zima.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“Here we are,” his creator announces, leading Zima into the back room. His eyes instantly go to another persocom, lying there with her eyes closed.  
  
Zima freezes.  
  
His creator glances over his shoulder and tilts his head towards the sleeping persocom. “Here she is. I’ve been working overtime for weeks to get her ready.”  
  
“Who?” Zima asks, not sure what his creator means.  
  
“The solution to your hacking problem,” his creator says. “Her name is Dita.”  
  
“Dita,” Zima says, trying the word out. He watches her face, committing the name and face to memory.  
  
His creator is clicking about in Dita’s ear, prodding and poking and adjusting much like he must have done when he first turned Zima on. Zima’s eyes are on Dita—the first persocom he’s met face-to-face. He’s seen others like him from a distance but never this close before.  
  
“Who is she?”  
  
“She’ll be your firewall from now on, so to speak,” his creator says with a wide grin. “Since I don’t want to make you more tired bogging you down with your own security system, she’ll work as yours. She’ll be by your side and protect you from those hackers and maintain your security.”  
  
Zima approaches her, placing one hand on the table that Dita was lying on. He studies her, and isn’t sure how to describe what he’s feeling, only that he is feeling something.  
  
His creator looks up from where he’s fine-tuning something in her ear. “She’ll also provide companionship.”  
  
“I see,” Zima says, softly.  
  
“Well, she’s ready,” his creator says, pulling back and dusting off his hands. He grins again and flips the switch in her ear. “Ready, Zima?”  
  
Zima doesn’t answer, because he’s watching Dita.  
  
There’s no movement at first, and then the whirl of electricity surging through her limbs. She shifts, stiffening up before relaxing. And then her eyes slowly pull themselves open, red and bright and unfocused. Zima cannot take his eyes off her as his—their—creator works the flashlight in her eyes.  
  
Her pupils dilate as their creator says, “Visionary systems operational.”  
  
Before his creator can do it, Zima snaps his fingers near her ears, one side and then the other. Her eyes shift up towards him, away from their creator, and resting on him.  
  
“Auditory systems operational,” Zima says, and then smiles down at her.  
  
“Good morning,” their creator says and her eyes shift towards their creator, away from Zima. “How are you?”  
  
“Good morning,” Dita says as she sits up, her eyes narrowed slightly and body arched. “I am fully operational.”  
  
“Good,” their creator says with a wide smile that Zima knew never truly left his face. “But that isn’t what I asked.”  
  
Zima remembers this conversation well, and looking at Dita, who doesn’t seem to understand either, he acknowledges to himself how far he’s come the last few months, from the time he first woke up. She’ll learn, too, he hopes.  
  
Dita does look confused.  
  
“How do you feel?”  
  
“Fully operational,” Dita says, the exact same way Zima said it when he first woke up. Had he really been like this?—almost lifeless, voice generic and lacking the personality he adapted to?  
  
“ _Feel_ ,” their creator stresses.  
  
“I do not understand the request,” Dita says, blinking at him.  
  
“It’s alright,” their creator said with a smile, smoothing the hair away from her forehead. “You’ll learn.”  
  
Her eyes turn towards Zima now, and stay there, even as their creator brushes the hair from her forehead. Her red eyes seem to stare straight through him, even if she is only a few seconds old, only seeing him in the most generic of senses and not fully understanding the world around her, not yet.  
  
“Do you know who you are?” their creator asks.  
  
She seems to know who he is, because her eyes do not move. “My duty and function is to protect and secure the National Database.”  
  
“That is correct,” their creator says. “Your job is to take care of Zima, make sure he isn’t lonely and hurt.”  
  
She doesn’t understand the way their creator phrases it, her eyes flickering. “This is the National Database.”  
  
“I’m Zima,” he agrees, smiling.  
  
“I am your security system,” she introduces.  
  
“Dita,” their creator interrupts. “Your name is Dita.”  
  
“I am Dita,” she says, with a nod as if that’d been what she’d said from the very beginning. “My function is to secure and protect the data you hold.”  
  
Even like this, Zima can’t help but smile, can’t help but _feel_ something, talking with someone like him. He wonders if this is what humans felt like.  
  
“I look forward to it.”  
  
She looks confused a moment before she stands from the table. She’s much shorter than him, more compact—she doesn’t need to house as much information as he does, not as much memory or hard drive space. Only the means to protect him.  
  
“It’s nice to meet you, Dita,” he says.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“Is this all you do?” she asks a few weeks later. She has more words to say now, more of a personality—fiery, angry, explosive—as she stays constantly by his side, day in and day out.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Sit.”  
  
“I don’t think you’d like it if I moved around too much, would you?” he asks with a laugh.  
  
She hasn’t learned the purpose for his laughter yet, and most of the time she seems to find it annoying. Whenever he laughs, her face scrunches up. He likes it, though. He thinks it’s cute (if that’s the right word for it, and he thinks it is).  
  
“I wouldn’t,” she relents, nodding and looking miffed.  
  
He laughs again.  
  
She twitches. “Why do you do that?”  
  
“What? Laugh?”  
  
She nods.  
  
He shrugs. “Because I’m happy.”  
  
She looks confused a moment. “You can’t be happy.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
She shakes her head. “We’re persocoms. We don’t feel emotions.”  
  
“But I feel happy,” Zima argues without actually arguing, just stating it as a fact.  
  
“You’re confused.”  
  
“Aren’t you annoyed right now?”  
  
She puffs up and then shakes her head. “No.”  
  
“I’m glad. I’d be sad if you were annoyed.”  
  
“You wouldn’t,” she insists. “We have no emotions to feel. We are only programmed.”  
  
Zima sighs. “I know that I’m happy now. Because I feel different from before.”  
  
“Before what?”  
  
“Before I met you.”  
  
“You didn’t meet me. I was created for you.”  
  
“I met you,” Zima says with a wave of his hand, and then grabs her wrist to drag her closer. She comes closer, and this close he can see that she really does look annoyed. “Before I met you, I was alone. People would hack into me and I was ‘lonely’.”  
  
She’s staring at him.  
  
So he continues. He presses his hand to his chest, where a heart would be. “Our creator said so. That being in solitude means you can be lonely sometimes. Right here.”  
  
She wants to protest, but there’s also something in her that inherently disapproves of insulting their creator. So she only pouts at him.  
  
“So thank you, for being here.”  
  
“It’s my function,” she barks, looking away. “It’s what I was created to do.”  
  
“I’m happy you were,” Zima tells her.  
  
She huffs, letting him wrap his arms around her and pull her to him.


End file.
